Skip to main contentYour fears will make you foolish. As director Michael Moore points out so vividly in his film Bowling for Columbine, fear is just a tool The Man uses to keep us down.
Intellectually, the Nose knows this. And so far he has resisted the urge to obtain a concealed-weapons permit and fill his basement with cans of tuna, candles and extra batteries.
And yet.
And yet, there seems to be a fair amount to be just a wee bit alarmed about.
For example, shouldn't we be a tad panicked about the Portland School District? Once the pride and joy of this city, the anchor that kept Portland's middle class from drifting to the 'burbs, it's now thinking about cutting the shortest school year in America by another three weeks to plug the budget gap. Even if this proposal is a high-stakes bluff on the part of the school administration in its poker game with teachers unions, doesn't it feel like this is the umpteenth wake-up call for the school board, Portlanders and its leaders to actually do something? And, if it isn't tactical bluster, consider the effect of turning 50,000 kids loose for three weeks of extra vacation at a time when their parents presumably will still need to pull down a paycheck.
Shouldn't we also be anxious about the news that the bumbling of our police bureau makes the Portland Trail Blazers seem like a well-oiled machine? In the past two years, we have been told, the Oregon State Police crime lab has matched DNA evidence found at the scene of 33 burglaries with the genetic profiles of convicted felons. State cops were forwarding that information to the Portland Police Bureau--but our local cop shop never "routed" it to the right people, so arrests were never made.
And isn't angst an appropriate response to the developments in Congress, in which concern about corporate crime has become so yesterday? Prior to Nov. 5, Congressional Republicans made lots of noise about cracking down on corporate fraud. But the GOP election rout has made clear that the Republicans' resolve was as plastic as Michael Jackson's face. Last week, Congressional Republicans introduced a measure directed at all those American companies who create offshore mailboxes to avoid paying income taxes. But the legislation isn't a spanking for Ingersoll-Rand, Tyco and other companies that escape taxes with a P.O. box in Bermuda. Instead, the measure would allow these same companies to win contracts from the proposed Homeland Security Department.
And finally, shouldn't the Nose quiver to learn that not only is Osama bin Laden probably still alive, but also that the Bush administration has conceded that it would not meet its promise that all airport luggage will be checked for bombs by year's end?
Screw Michael Moore. Where are those batteries?
WWeek 2015